The result of the dinner that evening was that Evie grew more fretful.
After the departure of her guests, she evolved a brief formula which she
used frequently during the next few weeks: "There's something!" With her
quick eyes and quicker intuitions, it was impossible for her not to see
that Ford and Miriam possessed common memories of the kind that
distinguish old acquaintances from new ones. When it did not transpire in
chance words she caught it in their glances or divined it in the mental
atmosphere. As autumn passed into early winter she became nervous,
peevish, and exacting; she lost much from her pretty ways and something
from her looks. In the family the change was ascribed to the fatigue
incidental to the sudden round of lunches, dinners, dances, suppers,
theatre-parties, opera-goings, and "teas" with which American boys and
girls of a certain age are surfeited pitilessly with pleasure, as
Strasburg geese are stuffed for patA(C) de foie gras. Ford, however,
suspected the true reason, and Miriam knew it. They met as seldom as might
be; and yet, with the many things requiring explanation between them,
frank conversation became imperative.

"You see how it is already," Miriam said to him. "It's making her unhappy
from the start. You can't conceal the truth from her very long."

"She isn't fretting about the truth; she's fretting about what she
imagines."

"She's fretting because she doesn't understand, and she'll go on fretting
till she does. I'm not sorry. It must show you--"

"It shows me the necessity of our being married as soon as possible, so
that I may take care of her, and put a stop to it."

"I agree with you that you'd put a stop to it. You'd put a stop to
everything. She wouldn't live a year--or you wouldn't. Either she'd
die--or she'd abhor you. And if she didn't die, you'd want to."

"I wish to the Lord I had died--eight years ago. The great mistake I made
was when the lumber-jacks loosed my hand-cuffs and started me through the
woods. They called it giving me a chance, and for a few minutes I thought
it was one. A chance! Good God! I remember feeling, as I ran, that I was
deserting something. I didn't know what it was just then, but I've
understood it since. It would have been a pluckier thing to have been in
my coffin as Norrie Ford--or even doing time--than to be here as Herbert
Strange."

She said nothing for the moment, but as they walked along side by side he
shot a glance at her, and saw her coloring. They had met in the park. He
was going toward the house in Seventy-second Street when she was coming
away from it. Seizing the opportunity of a few words in private, he had
turned to stroll back with her.

"I didn't expect you to be here as Herbert Strange," she said, as though
in self-excuse. "I had to give you a name that was like my own, when I was
writing letters about your ticket, and sending checks. I had to do
everything to avoid suspicion at a time when Greenport was watched. I
thought you might be able to take your own name or something like it--"

"Evie fidgets about it," he continued. "She puts together the two facts
that you and I seem to have known each other, and that my name is
identical with your father's. She doesn't know what to make of it; she
only thinks 'there's something.' She hasn't said more than that in words,
but I see her little mind at work."

"Evie isn't the only one," she informed him. "There's Mr. Wayne. He has to
be reckoned with. He recognized your voice from the first minute of
hearing it, though he hasn't said yet that he knows whose it is. He may do
so at any time. He's very surprising at that sort of thing. I can see him
listening when you're there, not only to your words, but to your very
movements, trying to recapture--"

"The upshot of everything," he said, abruptly, "is that I must marry her,
take her back to the Argentine, where I found her, and where we shall both
be out of harm's way."

"You wouldn't be out of harm's way. You can't turn your back on it like
that. You alone might be able to slip through, but not if you have Evie."

"That will be my affair; I'll see to it. I take the full responsibility on
myself."

"If I've said it too plainly, it's because you force me. You're so
wilful."

"You mean, I'm so determined. What it amounts to is the clash of your
will against mine; and you refuse to see that I can't give way."

"I see that you must give way. It's in the nature of things. It's
inevitable. If I didn't know that, do you think I should interfere? Do you
think I should dare to run the risk of wrecking your happiness if I could
do anything else? If you knew how I hate doing anything at all--"

"I can't let things be--with all I know; and yet it's impossible for me to
appeal to any one, except yourself. You put me in a position in which I
must either betray you or betray those who trust me. Because I can't do
either--"

"I profit by your noble-mindedness. I told you I would. I'm sorry to have
to do it--I'll even admit that I'm ashamed of it--and yet there's no other
course for me. I'm not taking you at an unfair advantage, because I've
concealed nothing from you from the first. You talk about the difficulty
of your position, but you don't begin to imagine mine. As if everything
else wasn't gall to me, I've got your disapproval to add wormwood."

"It counts for everything with me--and yet I have to ignore it. But, after
all," he flung out, bitterly, "it's the old story. I claim the right to
squeeze out of life such drops of happiness--if you can call it
happiness--as men have left to me, and you deny it. There it is in a
nutshell. Because other people have inflicted a great wrong on me, you
insist that I shall inflict a greater one on myself. And this time it
wouldn't be only on myself; it would be on poor little Evie. There's
where it cuts. No, no; I shall go on. I've the right to do it. You must
stop me if you can. If you don't, or won't--why, then--"

"I can stop you ... if you drive me to extremes ... but it wouldn't be by
doing ... any of the things you expect."

It was because of the catch in her voice that he stopped in his walk, and
confronted her. In spite of the little tremor he could see in her no sign
of yielding, and behind her veil he caught a gleam like that of anger. It
was at that minute, perhaps, that he became distinctly conscious for the
first time of a doubt as to the superiority of "his type of girl."
Notwithstanding the awakening of certain faint perceptions, he had
hitherto denied within himself that there was anything higher or more
lovely. But in this girl's unflinching loyalty, and in her tenacious
clinging to what she considered right, he was getting a new glimpse of
womanhood, which, however, in no way weakened his determination to resist
her.

"As far as I see," he said, after long hesitation, "you and I have two
irreconcilable duties. My duty is to marry Evie; yours is to prevent me.
In that case there's nothing for either of us but to forge ahead, and see
who wins. If you win, I shall bear no malice; and I hope you'll be equally
generous if I do."

"But I don't want to win independently of you. If I did, nothing could be
easier."

He tossed up his hand with one of his fatalistic Latin gestures, drawing
the attention of the passers-by to the man and woman talking so earnestly.
For this reason, and because she was losing her self-command, she hastened
to take leave of him.

Arrived at home, it gave her no comfort to find Charles Conquest--the
most spick and span of middle-aged New-Yorkers--waiting in the
drawing-room.

"I thought you might come in," he explained, "so I stayed. I have to get
your signature to the papers about that property in Montreal. I've fixed
the thing up and we'll sell."

"I meet him around--at the club and other places--and naturally I have
something to do with him at the office. I like him. If Evie can snap him
up she'll be doing well for herself. I'm sorry for Billy, of course; but
he'll have time to break his heart more than once before he'll have money
enough to do anything else with it. If I'd married at his age--"

This, however, was venturing on delicate ground, so that he broke off,
wheeling round toward the centre of the drawing-room. She folded the
documents and brought them to him.

"You know why I didn't send them?" he said, as he took them. "I thought if
I came myself, you might have something to tell me."

"No, no; not to-day. Don't you see I'm not--I'm not myself? I've had a
very trying morning."

"What's the matter? Tell me. I can keep a confidence even if I can't do
some other things. Come now! I don't like to think you're worried when
perhaps I could help you. That's what I should be good for, don't you see?
I could assist you to bear a lot of things--"

His tone, which was so often charged with a slightly mocking banter,
became tender, and he attempted to take her hand. For a minute it seemed
as if it might be a relief to trust him, to tell him the whole story and
follow his counsel; but a second's thought showed her that she could not
shift the responsibility from herself, and that in the end she should have
to act alone.

"Good-bye." He put out his, hand frankly, and smiled so humbly, and yet
withal so confidently, that she felt as if in spite of herself she might
yield to his persistence through sheer weariness.

* * * * *

To her surprise, the next few weeks passed without incident bringing no
development in the situation. She saw little of Evie and almost nothing of
Ford. One or two encounters with Charles Conquest had no result beyond the
reiteration on his part of a set phrase, "You're coming to it, Miriam,"
which, while exasperating her nerves, had a kind of hypnotic effect upon
her will. She felt as if she might be "coming to it." Without calculating
the probabilities she saw clearly enough that if she married Conquest the
very act would furnish proof to Ford that her intervention in his affairs
had been without self-interest. It would even offer some proof to herself,
the sort of proof that strengthens the resolution and supports what is
tottering in the pride. Notwithstanding the valor with which she
struggled her victory over herself was not so complete that she could
contemplate the destruction of Ford's happiness with absolute confidence
in the purity of her motives in bringing it to ruin. It was difficult to
take the highest road when what was left of her own fiercest instincts
accompanied her on it. That she had fierce instincts she was quite aware.
It was not for nothing that she had been born almost beyond the confines
of the civilized earth, of parents for whom law and order and other men's
rights were as the dead letter. True, she was trying to train the
inheritance received from them to its finer purposes, as the vine draws
strange essences from a flinty soil and sublimates them into the
grape--but it was still their inheritance. While she was proud of it, she
was afraid of it; and the fact that it leaped with her to separate Norrie
Ford from Evie Colfax was a reason for distrusting the very impulse she
knew to be right. Marriage with Conquest presented itself, therefore as a
refuge--from Ford's suspicion and her own.

For the time being, however, the necessity for doing anything was not
pressing. Evie was caught into the social machine that had been set going
on her account, and was not so much whirling in it as being whirled. Her
energies were so taxed by the task of going round that she had only
snatches of time and attention to give to her own future. In one of these
she wrote to her uncle Jarrott, asking his consent to the immediate
proclamation of her engagement, with his approval of her marriage at the
end of the winter, though the reasons she gave him were not the same as
those she advanced to Miriam. To him she dwelt on the maturity of her
age--twenty by this time--the unchanging nature of her sentiments, and her
desire to be settled down. To Miriam she was content to say, "There's
something! and I sha'n't get to the bottom of it till we're married."

Of the opening thus unexpectedly offered her Miriam made full use,
pointing out the folly or verifying suspicions after marriage rather than
before.

"Well, I'm going to do it, do you see?" was Evie's only reply. "I know it
will be all right in the end."

Still a few weeks were to pass, and it was early in the new year before
Uncle Jarrott's cablegram arrived with the three words, "If you like."
Miriam received the information at the opera, where she had been suddenly
called on to take the place of Miss Jarrott, laid low with "one of her
headaches." It was Ford who told her, during an entr'acte, when for a few
minutes Evie had left the box with the young man who made the fourth in
the party. Finding themselves alone, Ford and Miriam withdrew as far as
possible from public observation, speaking in rapid undertones.

He gave her a quick look, astonished rather than startled, but there was
no time for further speech before Evie and her companion returned.

It was Miriam's intention to put her plan into immediate execution, but
she let most of the next day go by without doing anything. Understanding
his driving her to extremes to be due less to deliberate defiance than to
a desperate braving of the worst, she was giving him a chance for
repentance. Just at the closing in of the winter twilight, at the hour
when he generally appeared, the door was flung open and Billy Merrow
rushed in excitedly.

"What's all this about Evie?" he shouted, almost before crossing the
threshold. "I've been there, and no one is at home. What's it about? Who
has invented the confounded lie?"

She could only guess at his meaning, but she forced him to shake hands and
calm himself. Turning on the electric light, she saw a young man with
decidedly tousled reddish hair, and features as haggard as a perfectly
healthy, honest, freckled face could be.

"Haven't you heard it? Of course you have. They wouldn't be writing it to
Uncle Charlie if you didn't know all about it. But I'm hanged if I'll let
it go on."

Little by little she dragged the story from him. Miss Queenie Jarrott had
written to Charles Conquest as one of the oldest friends of the family to
inform him, "somewhat confidentially as yet," of her niece's engagement to
Mr. Herbert Strange, of Buenos Aires and New York. Uncle Charlie, knowing
what this would mean to him, had come to break the news and tell him to
"buck up and take it standing."

"I'll bet you I sha'n't take it lying down," he assured Miriam. "Evie is
engaged to me."

"Yes, Billy, but you see Miss Jarrott didn't know it. That's where the
mistake has been. You know I've always been opposed to the secrecy of the
affair, and I advised you and Evie to wait till you could both speak out."

"But Evie's own family have been kept in the dark, except that she told
her aunt in South America. But that's where the mistake comes in, don't
you see? Miss Jarrott, not having an idea about you, you see--"

"Spreads it round that Evie is engaged to some one else, when she isn't.
I'll show her who's engaged, when I can find her in. I'm going to sit on
her door-step till--"

"I wouldn't do anything rash, Billy. Suppose you were to leave it to me?"

"What good would that do? If that old witch is putting it round, the only
thing for Evie and me to do is to contradict her."

"Evie's been the devil. I don't mind saying it to you, because you
understand the kind of devil she'd be. But Lord! I don't care. It's just
her way. She's told me to go to the deuce half a dozen times, but she
knows I won't till she comes with me. Oh, no. Evie's all right--"

"Yes, of course, Evie's all right. But you know, Billy dear, this thing
requires a great deal of management and straightening out, and I do wish
you'd let me take charge of it. I know every one concerned, you see, so
that I could do it better than any one--any one but you, I mean--"

"I understand that all right. I'm not going to be rough on them, but all
the same--"

She got him to sit down at last, made tea for him, and soothed him. At
the end of an hour he had undertaken not to molest Miss Jarrott, or to
fight that "confounded South-American," or to say a word of any kind to
Evie till she was ready to say a word to him. He became impressed with the
necessity for diplomatic action and, after some persuasion, promised to
submit to guidance--at any rate, for a time.

"And now, Billy, I'm going to write a note. The first thing to be done is
that you should find Mr. Strange and deliver it to him before nine o'clock
this evening. You'll do it quietly, won't you? and not let him see that
you are anything more than my messenger. No matter where he is, even in a
private house, you must see that he gets the note, if at all possible."

When he had sworn to this she wrote a few lines hurriedly. He carried them
away in the same tumultuous haste with which he had come. After his
departure she felt herself unexpectedly strong and calm.